February 10, 2010

I'm excited to announce that today's guest post is not from a regular blogger! Shonshas been my friend since the cheesy meet-n-greet we both attended during the summer before law school. She helped me make it through the worst three years of my life. She is now gainfully employed by the federal government and lives in Washington, D.C.

Enjoy

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Sparklebot has on more than one occasion encouraged me to start a blog. I have explained to her that I’d much rather just read hers. Well that, and I am lazy. But when Sparklebot asked me to do a guest post about love, the first thing I thought about is how people often discuss the difference between “love” and “like”. In 10 Things I Hate About You, a movie that imparts many life lessons, Bianca and Chastity discuss this important distinction:

Bianca: There's a difference between like and love. Because, I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.

Chastity: But I love my Skechers.

Bianca: That's because you don't have a Prada backpack.

I don’t think B and C were trying to have a profound conversation, but it made me wonder, how do you know for sure that you are in love? Chastity thinks she loves her Skechers, but is that because she hasn’t experienced true love?

I don’t own anything by Skechers, or Prada for that matter, but it did make me start to think of the first time I felt the difference between like and love. Last year, I told my boyfriend I loved him for the first time. I had never said I love you to anyone else besides family and friends. I’m not sure when the exact moment hit me, but I knew that I more than liked him because it took a lot of courage to tell him. Courage to tell him that I never felt that way about someone before. Courage to say that I couldn’t imagine my life without him. Courage to say that I would always be there for him. And maybe that explains at least one of the differences between like and love. You can like your Skechers, but it takes courage to love… Prada.

10 Things I Hate About You is a really profound movie that raises a lot of deep questions. One I have continually pondered since my first viewing: "[Y]ou can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"